


running up that hill.

by orphan_account



Series: formula one — ideas. [5]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Athletes, Bad Parenting, Biphobia, Chaptered, Charles Has Issues, Crying, Homophobia, I don't know if that's allowed but I don't really care, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, One-Sided Attraction, Running, Self-Esteem Issues, Stalking, Watching, he skips a lot of school and practice, pierre is bi and his parents don't like it, pierre is really good at running and he takes full advantage of that, track star pierre
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21783295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: pierre is on the track team, he feels someone watching him every practice. he has no idea who it is.-lapslock
Relationships: Daniel Ricciardo/Jean-Eric Vergne, Kimi Räikkönen/Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton/Nico Rosberg, Pierre Gasly/Charles Leclerc, Pierre Gasly/Max Verstappen
Series: formula one — ideas. [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534301
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. one. monday.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is, I just started writing and it just kept going. I do drag on a little, focusing on pierre before we meet charles but he's mentioned a few times. 
> 
> warnings: yes, charles is a stalker but he's nice about it I guess, please don't read if you don't like that. pierre is sorta into it, he's an attention whore but like lowkey about it. all the other characters (except max) are only really there for a few paragraphs and aren't actually major points in the story but I added them because they are technically there. people barely talk so like small amount of dialogue. 
> 
> title: 'running up that hill' - placebo

**running up that hill. chapter one: monday. **

sometimes pierre feels like he's gone to hell and back. like he's not getting any better, he's not working as hard as he used to. he's not motivated. he's running.

he runs, his legs always burn, he always does too much. it feels nice. the feeling of being free wraps around him. he's freezing but he burns so brightly. his hands shake and his legs are sore. he's made the first team, no longer just running for the fun of it, now he's in competitions. he good, his team hate him for it. he's the only one actually good, the only one winning them medals and trophies, first places and newspaper articals. he's good at running. 

training takes most of his time. he likes it like that. he likes the fact that he can have a few hours of home. his actual house doesn't feel like it used to. his parents ask too many questions about his love life and when he gives answers, they don't like them, they tell him that he's just going through a phase. maybe he is. he likes this phase, he decides. his parents fight a lot, they scream and yell and throw things at each other. they yell in the kitchen, they have no shame about it. they fight in public, they have no thoughts about how it affects him. they don't yell about him, at least not when he's in the house but they fight about petty things like how his mom did her hair or how his dad didn't wake pierre up in time for morning practice. little things that get on each others nerves and instead of being a normal person and ignoring the little things, they fight and blow them out of proportion. 

pierre gets out of class for practice. he's smart, passing all his classes with ease. managing to get A's and B's in all his classes. his coach, mr. horner, doesn't really seem to mind that he skips class. he's getting into college, no problem. he runs for hours until he's shaking and he's set new records. he likes this. he likes the pain of it, he likes the praise when he wins. he lives for it all. 

he throws up some times, he runs too much, drinks too much water, runs in too high heats. they all add up to him throwing up his guts in the private changing room bathrooms. sometimes horner sits with him, sometimes he gives him that sad side eye that he should be getting from his parents but his parents don't care like they used to. he's fine. he's free when he's running and that's keeping him going. he feels someone watching him when he's sitting on the bleachers because of nausea. he wants to look pretty for the person watching but he normally ends up puking until he cries. 

sometimes he doesn't show up to practice. if there's a double practice, like on a monday and then another on tuesday, he doesn't show up on the second day. no one bats an eye when this happens. it happens so rarely that when it does, they know why. he's either ran so much that he's exhausted, not bothering to wake up and and attend practice, or, he's skipped to go out with his boyfriend. 

pierre's dating some tough guy, new boy to the school, max. max isn't the nicest but he's the best that pierre thinks he deserves. he smiles at pierre when no one else does, he attends all the races and pierre does the same for his car racing. they go together as well as milk and chocolate. cut from the same cloth, same ambitious tendencies, same hunger for pain. maybe that's why pierre hasn't broken up with him, even when max has yelled at pierre until he's cried, even when max has hurt him so bad he can't walk. they work together too well for it all to fall apart. 

pierre smiles at teachers and students. they yell his name when they attend home races. races at the school's track. pierre doesn't care if he wins or not, he just loves the feeling. sure, he's probably the best in the country, but that's not why he's doing it. he's doing it for the praise he gets, the '_good job, pierre, you've really improved_' that he gets from horner, the smiles he gets from his friends when he shows the medal, the kisses he gets from max after the races. he does it for them, not him. 

pierre feels eyes on him. every monday at second period, doing suicides, he feels someone's eyes watching him. every tuesday at fifth period, practicing relay races, he feels someone watching him. every thurday _(because they don't have practice during school hours on wednesdayl)_ at third period, free practice (pierre normally does laps), he feels someone's eyes on him. friday, sixth period, sprints, he feels the eyes. 

he likes it. he likes the attention. no one else has brought it up so he assumes he's the only one being watched. he likes it. _how fucked up am I that I like being watched but a random person?_ he doesn't care. he finishes practice and as he walks back to the school building, pierre looks at every window, checking to see if he can spot the stalker. he never does. 

he runs harder and more and he hopes his trainers leave marks of him on the track. he hopes he goes down in the year books, he's won awards, he's got the medals and trophies but it's not enough, he's not satisfied. he wants everyone to know his name and to never forget him. he's pierre gasly for god's sake, he's got records and the record books to prove that he deserves to be praised. he never does get that praise he feels he deserves. 

he sometimes ditches weekend practice, only the saturday practice because he can't miss sunday, that's when they give out the names for who's doing what and you don't get a race if you don't attend the sunday practice. instead he watches the soccer team on saturday. 

he sits on the bleachers and he watches.

he watches as they pass like a unit. how daniel ricciardo, the class clown, somehow changes into a different person and actually does as he's told, he moves like he's practiced, like he knows what to do. how lewis hamilton, one of the popular kids who seems to care way too much about his appearance, doesn't care how muddy and ruined his clothes and shoes get, as long as he scores or passes the ball. how sebastian vettel, some german transfer student who talks way too much and with way too much enthusiasm, seems to calm down and stay quiet as long as he gets to score. how kimi raikkonen, the quiet kid, yells for the ball, how he's way more experienced than the others. pierre watches them the most. sure, there are other players on the team like antonio, alex , lando, george, charles, valtteri but he doesn't care about them. he watches the others. 

pierre likes how different their sports are. track is just running, feeling the ground and movement, soccer is about team and winning. its nice. the difference grounds him. 

sometimes he talks to them, little conversations that don't mean anything. pierre talks in mumbled english but the others aren't any better. he sits with them in lunch, the soccer team because the track team have something against him, only because he's the only one winning them any medals. the track team have a vendetta against him, he doesn't care. 

sometimes he talks to sebastian, he likes sebastian. sebastian, though, is probably one of the most talkative people that pierre has ever met. it's crazy to think he's dating kimi, someone who pierre's never heard more of a three worded sentence from. they work well, sebastian interpreting kimi's gestures better than pierre ever could have guessed. sebastian has maths with pierre, he's good at it, knows what he's doing and how to explain it to a lost pierre. they aren't close. 

he has english with daniel, the cheerful australian. pierre has no idea how daniel got here, he's too happy to actually belong to their gloomy city but he lives here, he attends the same school as pierre, eats the same food. he's the same, just somehow he's not lost that childish innocence and happiness. he's dating a french lad, jean-eric, pierre can't really remember anything about him but whenever jean comes and collects daniel, daniel's eyes light up like they never do. he knows that daniel's got it bad for jean-eric. daniel is loud, somehow louder than seb, but he's so god damn smart that it makes pierre feel like shit for even trying to get as good result as dan. pierre isn't close to daniel. 

lewis only sits with them sometimes. he's got a partner. pierre doesn't know if it's a girl or a boy yet. all he knows is their name is either nico or nicole. maybe it's both. lewis is probably the most secretive person that pierre's ever known, even more than kimi, with kimi he just tells you if you ask and if you don't ask then you don't get to know anything. with lewis, he gives you an answer that's not an answer, more like some question back than an actual answer. it makes everything so much more infuriating. but he's nice and he gives pierre the science answers when pierre asks. he doesn't talk to lewis much. 

pierre supposes that he doesn't talk to any of the boys much. he just hangs around them. they've all got their own lives, as does pierre. 

pierre hates his locker. he's got his locker next to some guy named robert. robert never really talks to him, he talks in polish to some of the other foreign kids. he flings his locker open, his locker door crashing into pierre's, making that annoying metallic noise that stings pierre's ears. pierre is foreign, he's french but he doesn't think anyone else in the school speaks french and if they do it's only because they do french and they don't know slang or how to speak the beautiful language properly. 

pierre is always quick at his locker. leaves his actual school bag and just grabs what he needs for track practice.

he stretches, eyes on him. he runs a few small laps just to warm up, eyes on him. he starts running the full laps, the ones that really make his legs burn but he loves it, eyes on him. sometimes pierre looks at the school building while he runs, hoping to catch the person out on the act but he never catches anyone.

He finishes, makes some small talk with horner about how he's improving and how he'll be winning again when the season starts and how he must spend lunch with horner whenever he can, he showers and then he's walking back to the school building with his eyes darting to each window to see that _one _person.

after his last class on mondays, he has practice again. he stretches, does small laps, does big laps, runs until his legs burn and his feet hurt, showers, leaves. he gets in max's car, presses a small kiss to max's cheek like he always does and they drive to max's. they kiss and they fuck and pierre feels content on mondays. he likes mondays. they're the calmest days.

he smiles to mr and miss verstappen when he leaves because they come home from work together at 9 p.m and they love pierre because they think he's just max's friend. he walks home because he's only a few blocks away from max and he listens to music, sometimes max sends him videos and voice recordings and he listens to them on the way home. mostly just max talking about his day because pierre likes max's voice. max talks to pierre like he kisses pierre, gentler than people would assume.

when pierre gets home, he kisses his mom on the cheek and pats his dad on the shoulder, to let them both know he's home. they've normally had their afternoon fight already when pierre gets home. he heats up his cold dinner, he eats, he washes it down with freezing water. he gets changed into running gear and he goes out for a jog around the estate. he comes back, he showers, he sleeps. his skin itches, he feels watched.

he gets up, stretches his arms over his head and reaches to close the curtains, hoping it will make him feel safer. but he freezes. a flash goes off from across the road. the kind of flash from taking a photo but maybe pierre being egotistical, maybe someone put on the flashlight for a second. he ends up leaving the curtains open, not bothered to close them and block the cool air from his open window.

he closes his eyes. the flash still stinging his eyes from the intensity. he sleeps, thinking of the possibilities of what had happened. 

mondays are nice. 


	2. chapter two. | tuesday.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tuesday time table:
> 
> 8 - maths - period one  
9 - english - period two  
10 to 11 - lunch  
11 - business - period three  
12 - art - period four  
1 to 2 - lunch  
2 - french - period five (practice)   
3 - science - period six

**chapter two. **

**tuesday. **

tuesday's practice gets cancelled. the intercoms announce it to the school during first period which means that pierre actually has to attend tuesday classes for the first time in ages. it's unusual but pierre is glad, as much as he lives and breaths for running, it's nice to have a break and just relax for a day.

He kisses max goodbye and promises to meet up with him later. max smiles and leans in for another kiss but pierre is already out of his grasp with a small laugh. he waves goodbye to pierre before walking off to his own classes.

He has maths first period. he's struggling with understanding his teacher's thick accent, her accent paired with how fast she talks means that pierre is completely lost most of the time. he's too shy to put up his hand and ask her to talk slower but sebastian has no shame and does it for him every class. 

"yo, teach, please talk slower." sebastian says, the other students laughing. he talks in such a disrespectful way but he says it so nicely that he gets away with it. pierre could never even though most of the teachers like him.

sebastian smiles at him when he sees that pierre finally understands the teacher and claps him on the back when pierre gets answers right. seb is one of the most encouraging people pierre knows. seb turns to talk to the guy on his other side, charles. 

pierre already knows charles. charles is one max's friends. pierre has no idea how max and charles met because charles seems way too nice to be associated with max but apparently they're friends. pierre has talked to charles in the past but only small conversations that don't mean anything other than not wanting awkward silence, plus, max has some weird thing about pierre needing to get on with all of his friends so pierre smiles and goes with max when he hangs with friends.

_'I'm just expanding your friend circle.'_ max says whenever pierre asks but pierre thinks that he just doesn't want pierre having his own friends. max refuses to talk any of pierre's. he's never talked to seb or lewis or daniel, pierre doubts he even knows their names. he doesn't really care, he wants their friends separate so it works out.

charles smiles at him when he catches pierre's eyes. pierre smiles back. friendly, charles is friendly. he's not too shabby looking, nice on the eyes. he's got a cute smile that looks childish instead of attractive. charles is fairly popular, in one of the popular groups, pierre's heard girls going on about how cute and pretty charles is so pierre assumes that charles is some heartbreaker. apparently charles is going out with some girl named charlotte which pierre thinks is a bit strange. _charles, charlotte_. he shouldn't judge.

charles turns to look at him instead of sebastian. seb doesn't look offended, he just turns his body round to talk to antonio who sits behind them. pierre hears seb and antonio speaking italian, pierre didn't know that seb spoke italian. charles smiles again, "are you going to max's on saturday?"

"yeah, i always do. are you?"

"probably, he asked me over. said you'd be there." charles says. pierre nods. "so, I'll see you there?"

"i guess." pierre smiles, he reaches over and pulls on one of charles bracelets before pulling on one of his own. they're the same. the same silver band with 'mon amour' scraped onto it. "we match."

charles laughs. "yeah, we do. what a coincidence."

pierre snaps forward when he hears the teacher yelling for the class to focus but not before giving charles one last smile. yeah, charles isn't too bad on the eyes. especially when he smiles.

second period is english which is even worse. pierre's glad for once that they're watching a movie. his teacher is hung over. his head resting on the metal desk, not even flinching when the class starts yelling. pierre guesses he's dead.

he's got english with daniel. daniel's nice but for once he's tired and calm, barely keeping his eyes open.

"you okay?" pierre asks. his english is still stumbly and he doesn't know if he's right but apparently he is because daniel answers.

"yeah, mate, just a little tired." his accent sounds nice when he's tired, normally it sounds too excited but he sounds better tired. pierre decides he shouldn't say that to daniel, he might offend him. "I went to jev's and I literally couldn't calm down the whole night. I got so nervous for no reason and I probably ruined the night and jev probably hates me and he never wants to see me again and he's going to break up with me and then I'm going to be alone and all of you guys have relationships and I really like him and—"

pierre covers daniel's mouth with his hand. he can't keep listening to this. "he is not going to break up with you. he loves you, okay? what happened?"

"he wanted to fuck, you know, and I didn't and so I felt really bad and he kept giving me this look, you know the look, the one that says _'you're a really bad person'_ and I felt like shit. you know?" pierre nodded, he did know that look, max gave it to him often. "I was staying the night, too, so I couldn't even leave and say I'd talk to him tomorrow and normally the next day, he's fine and over it. you know, mate? like I feel bad. I don't know what to do."

"it's not your fault, dan. talk to him about it when he collects you." pierre offers.

"you know, he's in college." daniel says matter-of-factly. he says the last part bitterly but with a hint of humor. "why is he dating me? I'm only 16. what will he get out of this? arrested."

pierre laughs, daniel looks up from where he's rested his head against the wooden desk and gives him a smile. "it's fine. it'll work out."

"yeah, it will, dan."

pierre runs for his hour lunch break. since they don't have practice, he runs during lunch. he likes it. there's barely anyone there. he feels watched. his skin feels itchy and he wants to claw at it until there's no more skin left other than shredded pieces covered in blood. he feels itchy all over because he feels watched. but he always feels watched. 

so he runs. he runs and he runs and he runs and he decides to skip third period, business, because he's passing with an average A. he's not worried about failing that class. so he skips and he keeps running. he runs, showers, grabs something to eat by the canteen lady that loves him (sharon) and is off to fourth period. he still feels itchy but he ignores it and heads to art. 

art is fun. he sits in his normal seat, towards the back to the left. and he notices that the seating plan has changed but he's still in the same spot. he smiles at his teacher, ms. williams, and he sits down. he's next to charles now. charles gives him one of those smiles and pierre returns it. 

"hi, twin." pierre says. he pats charles on the shoulder before taking out his sketchbook. they have a topic and they draw, a pretty easy class. charles smiles. 

"bonjour. comment allez-vous?" charles replies. 

"bon. vous?" 

"bon."

a girl in front of them turns around. she looks annoyed. she jabs her pencil at them. "can you guys like not?" pierre raises an eyebrow, indicating he has no idea what she's on about. "speak english. you're in america." 

"speak american then." charles shoots back. the girl scoffs but she leaves them be. pierre let's a small smile pass and turns to charles. 

"vous n'êtes pas trop mal." pierre doesn't talk to him for the rest of the class but he does pat him on the shoulder again when he's leaving. charles nods at him. 

fifth period is french. if pierre is being honest, he has no idea how the school let him get away with doing french as he is a fluent french speaker but somehow he's sitting in class and talking to his teacher about her weekend. 

they're watching a movie. a french version of beauty and the beast, one of pierre's favourites. then he spots him, charles sitting by himself in the corner. pierre doesn't have to ask to move, the teacher loves him and let's him do whatever because he's the only one actually passing this class with flying colours. 

charles smiles when pierre sits down. "bonjour." 

"bonjour" pierre says back. "J'avais l'habitude de regarder ce film à répétition comme un enfant." _(I used to watch this movie on repeat as a kid.)_

"même, mais avec cinderella."_ (same, but with cinderella.)_

pierre hums in acknowledgement. he was obsessed with cinderella as well as a kid. charles laughs but pierre doesn't feel embarrassed for his love of disney films. 

"Je pense qu'on ferait mieux d'arrêter de parler dans français, j'ai des souvenirs de la fille de l'art." charles jokes. pierre laughs and they stop talking. it always ends like this, them deciding to stop talking. pierre likes to think that it's because charles doesn't want them to run out of things to talk about and then it being awkward but pierre also thinks that charles just doesn't like him. _(I think we better stop talking in french, I'm getting memories of the girl from art.) _

_if charles doesn't like him then he must be a great actor,_ pierre thinks. _maybe i can cancel on them on saturday? no, I really want to spend more time max. he's already getting mad at me for it. _

"êtes-vous bon?" charles whispers. he's turned himself to be facing pierre. his arm brushing against pierre's. he felt warmer than pierre expected him to, he looked like a cold person. _(are you good?) _

"Ouais, juste penser." _(yeah, just thinking.)_

the bell hurts pierre's ears everytime but he let's out a sigh of relief when he hears it. he smiles at charles, charles smiles back and then they seperate. charles goes to whatever friends he has and pierre goes to his. 

sixth period is science. pierre hates science. he's normally not there for that class because of practice so he's living off of lewis' notes. lewis happens to be amazing at taking notes so he's not that far behind everyone. lewis gives him a nod when pierre sits next to him. 

"practice cancelled?" 

"yeah, announced this morning." pierre answers. "kinda sucks, I was looking forward to it."

"yeah, soccer was cancelled too. its a bummer, man."

pierre nods. they don't talk anymore. pierre doesn't have conversations with anyone, he has quick words and little talks that don't mean anything. he's mind is jumbled and it's nobody but his own fault. he doesn't mind being alone, it just makes it easier to make plans with max and train. that's all he ever does, make plans with max and train. sometimes he'll spice it up, train and make plans with max instead of make plans with max and train. what a life to live. 

_so exciting,_ pierre thinks._ I really am at the hight of my life. _

the bell rings, the teacher dismisses them. pierre goes to his locker and grabs his needed books. his fingers hurt from him stretching them so much and trying to crack his knuckles in science so much that lewis had to ask him to stop. 

his bag is heavy, filled with homework he's not going to do because he's training and hanging with max. it's annoying but he doesn't mind the routine. it's routine, it feels nice. 

he meets max at his car. they share a quick kiss before they get in. 

"how was your day?" pierre mumbles. he's playing with the fluff of his scarf that he hastily put on. he didn't even wrap it around himself, just hung it on his shoulders. it was getting colder and he needed all the help he could to get warm, he was a naturally cold person. max was the opposite, he seemed like a human radiator. 

"good, babe, you?" max turns on the heater in the car, making pierre smile that max had even noticed his shivering. 

"fine. practice is cancelled so I can stay over longer if you want." pierre includes the second part after a brief pause. 

max smiles at him. "that would be great."

"cool, yeah, I'll stay over."

"would be great if you could stay the night." max says, his obvious hope in his voice. 

"we'll see how I'm feeling." pierre laughs, he winks at max. 

"i better make you feel real good then." max promises. pierre grabs his hand and kisses the palm. max gives him a soft smile. the cute kind that makes pierre go all mushy. 

"you always do."

it's almost twelve when pierre gets home. he's tired and he just wants to go to bed, so he does the same routine as always. he kisses his mom on the cheek, pats his dad on the shoulder, showers, goes to his bedroom after saying goodnight to his younger sisters. 

his window is open. he didn't leave it open. it was too cold this morning for him to even consider having his window open. maybe his mom left it open or something. yeah, that's reasonable. that's _totally_ the reason.

he changes into his pajamas which consists of an overlarged t-shirt and whatever he tracksuit bottoms he feels like wearing. he runs his hand over his face

he hears the shutter of a camera. he can see the flash going off. he freezes. pierre slowly walks up to window. looking around, he sees nothing noticeable. the flash goes off again. 

maybe it's not even for him, it could be another person's stalker, it's not all about him. other people are interesting, they could have stalkers too. but it's not for them because the flash is aimed at his house, his bedroom window. 

he's not safe. but he likes it. 

he smiles, in a override of fear, he smiles. hoping the stalker gets the best photo they can. the flash goes off. he doesn't get which house it is again. its almost impossible, the building across from him is a huge apartment building, the apartments too tight together, it could come from any of the eighteen floors. he just doesn't know who it is. 

He closes his window, too cold to keep it open but he leaves the curtains open, he can't sleep if they're closed. the stalker will go to bed eventually and stop taking photos and pierre is not willing to ruin his sleep for the slight chance someone is taking pictures of him. 

he feels someone's eyes on him as he slips into the bed. he doesn't mind, if someone wants to watch him then so be it. 

he doesn't get to sleep until later than night, too awake with fear to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hate this like this is so bad


End file.
